Earning Its Stripes: Condor CEO on Life After Lufthansa

Condor is not a name that rolls off the tongue for most U.S. travelers. Yet the German carrier – with its hard-to-miss candy-striped jets – flies into more than a dozen points across the Americas, and around 40% of its summer transatlantic passengers are American.

CEO Peter Gerber, who took the controls in February 2024 after more than three decades inside the Lufthansa Group, is keen to close the recognition gap. 

The airline is trying to reposition itself from a traditional German leisure carrier into something more ambitious: an independent network airline capable of competing directly with Lufthansa on both short- and long-haul flying.

He sat down with Skift to discuss Condor’s pivot away from its former parent company, its growth ambitions, and how bookings for this summer’s World Cup are tracking.

Losing the Lufthansa Lifeline

For more than half a century, Condor was the leisure arm of the Lufthansa Group before being sold t